


Conversations IN SPACE

by Sub_Rosa



Category: Heaven Will Be Mine (Visual Novel), We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Crack, F/F, Gen, Memorial Foundation Ending (Heaven Will Be Mine), Post-True Route (We Know The Devil), Spoilers, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:26:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sub_Rosa/pseuds/Sub_Rosa
Summary: Six badly behaved girls, shaken and stirred.





	Conversations IN SPACE

The vessel crash-lands into the surface of the moon on a Tuesday.

It’s not the first machine deployed against Luna, but it is one of the first ones to make it through the atmosphere and the weight of Luna’s Culture. Every weapon and relativistic killing bullet has -- until now -- has failed to arrive at its destination, literally falling apart. The weapons and attacks launched by Earth are alien to Luna, and the alien is always ever-so-frail.

Perhaps the vessel makes it it through to Luna because it isn’t a weapon; perhaps the vessel makes it through because it _isn’t_ so alien to Luna after all.

In the end, it crash-lands in the park outside of the house where Saturn, Pluto, and Luna-Terra room together. Live together. Sleep together.

“Do you think we should do something about that?” Luna-Terra asks.

“If the aliens wanna abduct us, they can come and get us,” Saturn replies. “I don’t let just anyone anally probe me.”

“Yes you do,” Pluto says gently. She’s already halfway to the door, donning a proper jacket for the weather. Luna-Terra is the first to follow her, dragging Saturn along behind her.

The vessel is sitting in the middle of a massive crater, cutting through the earth and uprooting several trees, and now Saturn is the first to investigate, hopping over the edge of the crater to see what made the mess.

It’s a cramped little thing, impressively high-tech -- which means it looks like a brutalist wet dream assembled en-masse by some factory for a bureaucrat. There’s a hatch and a window on the side looking in…

“Holy fucking shit,” Saturn says. “I was _joking_ about the aliens.”

She cracks the door open before Pluto or Luna-Terra can stop her, exposing an illegible view of bodies and colors, arms and wings and eyes and hair. The first she understands about the scene is the view of mouths kissing mouths; and suddenly the image resolves into three basically-normal teenage girls making out in a box.

A box from space.

One of them breaks away from her partners, looks up and out the door to meet Saturn’s horrified and excited gaze, sees the open door, says:

“Wait. Oh my god. Are we already on the moon?”

“Duh,” Saturn says. “Where did you think you were? Ceres?”

“We’re already on the moon,” the red-haired girl says, and begins to hyperventilate. “We’re alive?”

“Hah!” says one of the others, dark-haired and dripping wet all over. “I knew they wouldn’t bother throwing us into space if they were just executing us!”

“We’re alive,” the red-haired girl repeats faintly. “I wasn’t supposed to survive for more than seven last minutes in heaven. I’m so dead.”

“Cmon, Jupes, this wasn’t even our first threesome. You were already dead.”

The third girl peers at Saturn, then looks at Pluto, standing over Saturn’s shoulder. “I think we’ve been exiled? You know, I’ve always sort of wanted to be a Loonie.”

Saturn grins, staring at the three girls and staring into space. “Do you know what this means?”

“I don’t,” says Luna-Terra. “I’m sure you’ll enlighten us, though.”

“New neighbors!” Saturn and Pluto say at the same time.

“Please, no. My Dunbar number is barely higher than two.”

Several few more vessels begin to fall through the atmosphere, and the third girl says:

“Oh. I think that’s the rest of the Scouts.”

**♁ / ♀**

“Can I ask you a question?” Venus says to Luna-Terra one day. Luna-Terra is busy playing some game or another, talking through her mic about something to do with timing, but she still pauses and turns to Venus anyways.

“Shoot.”

“You’re, uh, like me, right?”

“Sure,” Luna-Terra says.

“I’m like you? Is there anything you can tell me? Any advice you would give me?”

“You should really ask Pluto,” Luna-Terra says. “She actually makes good decisions, generally speaking.”

“Why Pluto-? WAIT, PLUTO IS LIKE YOU TOO!?”

“No, actually, Pluto is nothing like me. Except in the one specific sense that you’re talking about.”

“Woah.”

“Don’t you already have two girlfriends?”

“I wasn’t saying ‘woah’ like that!”

“Venus, everyone says ‘woah’ like that. But you asked me a question, right?”

Venus nods.

“And you’re _sure_ you want to hear it from me?”

Venus nods again.

“The thing you should understand about being like us is that your entire life is an asymptotic curve, always approaching who you want to be without ever reaching it. We are Xeno’s paradox. Being yourself is great, I totally recommend it, but you’re probably going to spend the rest of your life hating yourself anyways because an infinitesimal gap looks nearly half as wide as an infinite gap, and you’re doomed to turn on yourself in senseless flailing. You will never be perfect and the only way to be happy is to accept that you’re broken and fucked up and are inextricably broken and fucked up and to be totally okay with your broken-ness; but you can never completely accept that you’re broken and fucked up, you can only approach acceptance in an asymptotic curve.”

Venus looks eggshell-white, pale and trembling, staring off into space as if she’s just witnessed a bloody murder. “Um.”

“So, the only way to be happy is to accept that you’re always going to be a little unhappy.”

“JUPITER! NEPTUNE!” Venus yells, still looking haunted. “I NEED A HUG!”

She disappears in a flurry of wings, and Luna-Terra sighs. “I told her she should have asked Pluto.”

**♃ / ♇**

“Luna-Terra told me that you used to be kind of self-righteous,” Jupiter says to Pluto one day, while Pluto is busy making tea.

“Did she now?” Pluto says, tapping her cheek. “That’s cute. I’ll have to remember that.”

“Well. It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it, then?” Pluto asks.

“She said that you used to be… upright? I don’t know exactly what she meant.”

“Hmm…” Pluto says. “Well, why are you asking?”

Jupiter distantly notices that Pluto has already poured her a cup of tea. Distantly, she realizes she’s already drinking it.

“I worry about being evil,” Jupiter confesses. “All of the time.”

“I know how you feel,” Pluto responds.

“You seem so laid-back,” Jupiter says.

“Living on a fully-automated gay space commune does that,” Pluto laughs. “So does getting… well, nevermind. I used to be a lot worse.”

“Really?” Jupiter asks.

“Sure. I still care a lot. I’ll always care a lot. But I cared so much I was almost crushed under the weight of the world, even in space. I wanted to understand everything and everyone perfectly. I wanted to make the world perfect. I wanted to accept everything and every want. I wanted to be good in thought and deed and heart and want.”

“And you just… don’t want any of that anymore?” Jupiter asks skeptically.

“Of course I want it. But it doesn’t hurt like it used to. It’s complicated.” Pluto sighs and leans back in her chair. “But what about you?

“Me?”

“The desire to be good is a kind of eversion impulse, you know. It’s still the instinct to give up ‘what is’ for ‘what could be’, just… aimed in a different direction. It’s aimed at the flawless and righteous instead of the unintelligible or the malign. You’ve everted yourself once before, right? Do you think you really want to do it again?”

Jupiter shrugs helplessly. “I don’t. I don’t know. I haven’t been thinking about anything so complicated.”

“So what have you been thinking about?”

“I’m worried about. Being gay?”

Pluto sighs and reaches out to ruffle Jupiter’s hair.

“Well, we’ll work on it.”

“What?”

**♄ / ♆**

“You know,” Neptune says. “I once drank unadulterated paint thinner.”

“Hah! That’s nothing!” Saturn snaps. “Once I smoked asbestos.”

“Oh yeah? Once I licked the fuse of a roman candle in order to put it out.”

“Well, once I made my own gunpowder in our garage, just to see if I could.”

“Once, at summer camp, I got bored and whittled my own dildo, just to see if I could, without worrying about splinters.”

“Once, I tried to sit on one of the fingers of my ship-self.”

“Hah! Did it fit?”

“According to everyone else, no, I’m not _that_ plastic. But as far as I’m concerned, it totally worked.”

“Once I forgot to sleep because I was too busy trying physically impossible sex positions.”

“Once I forgot to sleep for a WEEK because I was too busy trying toxic nootropics.”

“Once I got so drunk that I sleepwalked into the woods and killed a squirrel.”

“Well, back when we were still pilots, me and LT killed an autonomous drone, fighting at relativistic velocities!”

“Hah! You were in _machines_. Back in the Summer Scouts I wrestled a bear into submission with my bare hands!”

Saturn flops back, at a loss for words. “Okay, that sounds absolutely terrifying. _You win_.”

“Yesssss,” Neptune hisses, grabbing the last slice of pie.

Saturn pulls out her phone and begins texting.

> **♄:** guys
> 
> **♇:** What’s up, sweetie?
> 
> **♁:** ?
> 
> **♄:** guys what the hell is a ‘bare’?


End file.
